Centrs Dardedze: Achieving a deeper impact in a financially sustainable way

Centrs Dardedze, a non-governmental organisation in Latvia, has partnered with Spring Impact to scale up Džimba (en: ‘Jimba’) – a programme preventing sexual violence against children by teaching kindergarten and primary school children about personal safety and safe relationships.

SUMMARY

“We weren’t accustomed to looking at funding in this way, we were set on ‘giving’. We’d rather sweat and work ourselves out, than face the risk of ‘what if nobody’s going to pay for it’. We didn’t dare to stand up and test our scale model with this in mind. But someone had to come in and protect us.”

For the past 20 years, Centrs Dardedze, one of the most influential non-governmental organisations in Latvia, has been working to ensure that every child has a safe childhood. Amongst their programmes, they have been delivering Džimba (en: ‘Jimba’) – a key  programme preventing child sexual abuse by teaching kindergarten and primary school children about personal safety and safe relationships in an engaging and exciting way.

With a significant impact on preventing sexual violence against children, the programme has had an impressive growth to date, being delivered in 60% of kindergartens across Latvia. Its success, coupled with interest from organisations within and outside of the country in running the programme, made it clear that Džimba needed to be delivered at scale.

But the sheer scale needed for the programme to be as impactful as possible required new strategies, unprecedented approaches to funding, sustainability, and testing, and a noteworthy shift in mindsets. Centrs Dardedze partnered with Spring Impact to create a structured approach needed to truly achieve the impact at scale they desired, focused on developing: 

  • New strategies which consider the problem they are looking to solve and the intended impact on the wider environment
  • A scale model that achieved deeper impact in a financially sustainable way 
  • A significant shift in mindset and confidence in their approach

Read the case study to learn more about the key lessons gathered on Centrs Dardedze’s journey to impact at scale so far.

Transition to scale support from Spring Impact to Centrs Dardedze was made possible with funding by Oak Foundation.

Read the case study

Webinar recording

On 12 May 2022, Centrs Dardedze and Child Health and Development Centre have joined us for a panel discussion to share practical lessons and key insights from their journey to scale so far. Watch the event recording to learn more about their experiences.

Find out more

Learn more about the Džimba programme.
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